Do You Schedule Ads to Run When the Business is Closed?

Jay Smith asks, "I was wondering how many of you schedule ads to run when the business is closed? I don't schedule ads to run on Sundays for most businesses if they are not open and definitely not those on a limited budget. My reasoning is that 90% of people buy on impulse. A large amount of purchasing is based on impulse, even car sales. What about you, why or why not?"

I agree with Jay for the most part. There is a local Mexican restaurant that runs TV ads that I see at 9pm on a Sunday night. He buys them because they are cheap.

For several years, I've told the owner to advertise between 10am and 1pm weekdays for his lunch specials on as many radio stations that he could afford. The concept is there are plenty of people who eat out at lunch time 5 days a week and you have 5 days every week to invite them to try your food. That needs to be a great experience so that they will return for dinner sometime, or lunch again.

This week he is finally doing it, so we'll see what the results are. I stopped in for lunch at one of his locations Wednesday and they were busier than usual!

On the other hand, I have a jewelry store that only advertised in mornings with live 10 second sponsorships. I was able to incorporate enough information including telling people that they open this morning at 9am, to grow this into a bigger campaign.

Finally, I will sometimes add non-primetime ads at no charge to a paid prime time schedule to give certain businesses some extra love and exposure.

I appreciate the thoughts behind your strategy, Jay ... but perhaps you're overlooking something. While you are correct that a strong call to action can spur impulse purchasing, there is also the consideration that a prospect will walk through several steps before they fall into the action mode. A good consistent campaign walks the prospect through each one. Now, as for that impulse (aka Action) step: Let's take your example of the car dealer. While they're not open on Sundays, I think you'll find they do allow folks on the lot to "window shop". If you stop by the dealership on a Sunday, you'll see a good number of folks browsing around. If you ask them why they look on Sunday, they may tell you it's the only day they have much time to ... or perhaps they may even say they like to look around without having a salesperson looking over their shoulder. (I Know of dealerships that seem to "forget" to lock a couple of the cars up so window shoppers can get in behind the wheel to see how it feels ... legroom, etc) You can get creative and run a spot on Sundays to invite folks out to take a look without any pressure ... and suggest they "contact the dealership on Monday ... when we're open from ___ to ___". If they're out and about on a Sunday, and your dealer is inviting them to stop by ... it's a way they can still be selling when they're closed ... with papertowrk to follow.

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